Dependent Origination — 2014-02-22

Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 163-minute seminar, Ilya Djerovich (a former Sera Je ordained monk) presents the dependent origination teaching (the 12 links of causality) as the engine room of Buddhist philosophy, using practical metaphors like nails and hammers to explain how religious teachings suit different minds. He explores the 12 links in precise detail—from ignorance through karma, consciousness, conception, sense organs, contact, sensation, craving, appropriation, existence, birth, aging and death—showing how these unfold across lives. Djerovich illustrates this with embryological data and the Garbhavakranti Sūtra’s remarkably accurate account of fetal development, then applies the framework to a verified past-life case of a Sri Lankan boy (Vijayaratne) who remembered murdering his betrothed in a previous life. The teaching emphasizes that understanding the 12 links enables practitioners to take karmic control of future rebirths through careful conduct and mental discipline at the time of death.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2014-02-22 – KR.mp3

UUID: 5c9a61c3-bfa6-4ad6-aeae-268badc3b1ad

Teacher: HH Dalai Lama

Collection: Dependent Origination

Date: 2014-02-22

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~21,147

Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Tibetan Buddhist Institute to the first of our seminars by Ilya Djerovich, our translator. I think just about everybody here knows Ilya. But just to refresh your memory for those who don’t, Ilya has been an ordained monk at the Sera Je Monastery and as our teacher Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen said has really at the level of Lharampa Geshe. We’re very fortunate that Ilya was able to present a seminar topic, the engine room of saṃsāra 12 links of dependent arising both from a Tibetan Buddhist view but also with his insights of Western psychology, philosophy, sociology and to bring those together for our benefit. So without any further ado, I’d like to hand over to you, Ilya.

You. You very Sorry, Ilya. We will have a fifteen minute break in about an hour’s time. And the presentation may stretch after half past four towards five. And so just to let you know, but if you do need to quietly slip away that’s okay.

Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to see so many well known faces again after the Christmas break and to see perhaps a couple new faces as well. Then our topic today is really the very core of the Buddhist teachings. It is said that it is through meditation on the 12 links, the forward and backwards meditation on the 12 links, that Buddha Śākyamūni, at least according to the Pāli Canon, attained full enlightenment.

So this is not a subsidiary topic, is a central topic. But not all topics are good or helpful for all minds. Then I was trying to figure a way to present this to an Australian audience, and I suddenly realized that if I made reference to the great Cathedral of Australia, where all the Australians gather on Sunday, Bunnings, you would all immediately grasp my drift. So I would thought I would take a very practical example of the impact of various types of teachings on the mind. And when I came here today, Chris and Erin had a really worried look, because they saw I was carrying two hammers, a piece of two by four, and two nails.

Then I’d like to use them as a metaphor, and I think this metaphor is quite helpful to us, perhaps more helpful than some of the traditional Tibetan metaphors. Then you all know the ominous moment whenever someone says they need a metaphor, she says, then you also need a volunteer. And I had preempted my dear wife Mandy, but as she is a photographer, perhaps somebody else would be willing to be a volunteer. Please, please. It’s very simple.

I just need you to hold a piece of 2×4 facing the audience. Now, imagine you’re renovating a house. Before you start drilling, hammering, or screwing, you must identify the material, right? You cannot, for instance, hammer a nail, such as this one, in a brick. Even with the best of hammers, it’s not possible.

However, it’s perfectly possible to hammer it in a piece of wood, isn’t it? Now this refers to the mental disposition of the person. If a person has a brick like mental disposition, and this is a product of past karmic lives, then a nail is of no use. You need a concrete screw or a brick screw, and a very good drill. If on the other hand the karmic disposition is like wood, then you can use a nail.

So you can clearly see already that in a function of the karmic disposition, different religious teachings are necessary. For some who have a brick like disposition, the monotheistic traditions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are very beneficial. They’re actually the only ones which help. Someone with that disposition will not benefit at all, if one tries to explain Buddhist teachings to them. Just like if you try to hammer a nail into a brick wall.

However much you hammer, it’s not going to go in, In the worst case scenario, it will split the brick wall. So you can already see that proselytism from a Buddhist standpoint is meaningless. Proselytism is a denial of the karmic differences in the background. You cannot handle wood, brick, or let’s say steel in the same way. So before we ourselves choose a religious tradition, we should identify our mind.

The type of mind we have. Do we have a brick like mind? In which case we might want to turn towards monotheisms which are helpful to us. Do we have a wood like mind? In which case the monotheisms are not going to be helpful, but other teachings such as the Jain tradition teachings, Hinduism, Buddhism, be helpful.

Once we have identified our mind, and I apologize to have you hold this for so long, The next question is what is our goal? If our goal is a small goal, like for instance fixing a portrait to a wall, then a little nail is okay. This small goal, from a Buddhist standpoint, would be the practice of the being of small scope. Then with such a small goal, even if you have a rather shoddy hammer like this one I’d like to say this is Chinese, but I think it’s Australian. Then even with such a shoddy hammer, you can probably drive a small nail inside.

Right? And it’ll stay there. But, if your goal is a great goal, it’s no longer just the practice of the being of small scope, improving your lot in future lives, but it is, for instance, gaining complete liberation from cyclic existence, then you have a very big nail. And for such a big nail, a shoddy hammer doesn’t do the job. Well, it might, but it would be dangerous for my colleague.

You need a big hammer. We’ll say an Australian hammer. Now, irrespective of whether you are hammering in a small or a big nail, and really irrespective of whether you’re working with brick or wood, you have to understand how to hammer. How to hammer is how to practice Dharma. So, what are the faults in hammering?

The first fault is not really looking where you’re putting the nail and just going boom. This is dangerous for all concerned. You must identify what you want to hammer. In other words, you must identify what you want to meditate upon. Step one.

Then, if the hammer represents one’s energy and one’s concentration, obviously people have different levels of energy and concentration. Some have weak energy and concentration. Some have strong energy and concentration. You have to know for yourself your own disposition. Are you able to hammer a nail like this into wood?

Or is it more realistic to stick to a nail like this? In other words, do you have the strength to be a practitioner of the middling scope? Or realistically, are you right now someone who has the strength to be a practitioner of the small scope? Once you have ascertained that, and you have decided where you want to hammer your big nail, which actually really represents the teachings on the 12 limbs, You have to keep hammering regularly while hitting the nail on the head. Now, what are the thoughts?

And these we see I think regularly in Buddhist centers. I have friends in the other religious traditions, a very close friend of mine is an Orthodox monk, he sees the same thing in the Christian Orthodox tradition. The first mistake is to hammer the nail two three times here, and then think, Oi, no I don’t really like that. And shift it here, and hammer it a couple times here. Put it back here, hammer it a bit more.

This is the practitioner or the meditator who keeps changing topic of meditation. Just as a person who keeps changing religion, we have a lot of them. Now what is the result of this policy? You actually get nowhere, don’t you? At the end of your life, you have a piece of wood, your mind, with a couple tiny holes.

Those are the karmic imprints. Nothing was accomplished. You have a finite amount of time to finish a job, you didn’t do the job. The second mistake is to put the nail in the correct place, and then to really start handling hard. And then, let’s say you’re in Australia, put the hammer down and you go have a smoky, and then you chat with some friends and you go off and you go downtown and you really forget about the nail.

Then again the job is not accomplished, you have a deeper karmic imprint. I mean the Dharma has penetrated deeper in the mind, but not penetrated to the depths you want. So what do you have to do to practice correctly in all religious traditions? You must identify your target, and you must hammer regularly. Now whether you hammer quickly or slowly is irrelevant.

If you are young and strong, you will hammer quickly. If you’re older, will hammer slowly. But if you have identified the material, the wood, in other words your mind’s capacities correctly, the Dharma correctly, and your energy level correctly, and you keep hammering, it will happen. So the reason for failure in practice for Westerns overwhelmingly, is this lack of consistency in practice. Lack of consistency, lack of realistic assessment of one’s own capacities, and lack of perseverance.

These are things which can be addressed. Thank you very much. Then I’m sorry for my hammering metaphor, but I thought it would be more helpful than our traditional metaphors about yaks and all that, you know. So this being the case, our topic today is the very core of the practice of the being of middling scope. I’m quite confident in asserting that there is nobody in this room who is even close to being a practitioner of the middling scope.

I doubt that any one of us is a true practitioner of the small scope, Since a true practitioner of the small scope is somebody who is indifferent to this life, then if we are sincere with ourselves, not one of us is indifferent to this life. The number of excuses one gets for not attending teachings really demonstrate this. I have to go pick up the cat. I have to go to a birthday party. My house needs repairs.

I promised my wife I’d take her to the restaurant. Then, when we say this, we are defining ourselves as a worldly being. Then if that is the case, the Dharma which is of benefit to us is a Dharma of worldly beings. And what are the meditations which benefit worldly beings? Meditation on impermanence and death.

But if one is able to rise above this, and to actually focus on future lives, then one has become a being of the small scope. It’s a very difficult thing to be, because a being of the small scope turns his back on this life. Then for such a being the meditations which are of benefit are those which are explained within the practice of the scope, the being of small scope. Those meditations may very well not be of benefit to us, and we do see that. People meditate on karma and causality and it has no impact on their mind simply because they are not beings of the corresponding level, of the corresponding scope.

What benefits their minds are the preliminary meditations on impermanence and their own death, which forces them to think of what comes after death. However, here we present a very complete view of the path, which you can then practice over the years as you proceed, and we shall therefore move upwards to the practice of the being of middling scope. Now the practice of the being of middling scope is someone who is profoundly convinced that a cycle of lives exists, that it is infinite, and that its nature makes it unbearable. So I’m quite sure nobody in this room is in that category, and probably very few of any Westerners are. Even the Westerners who believe in reincarnation, do not believe that reincarnation is an unpleasant experience.

It is more like an exotic form of tourism, and this is not the case. So, to give you an idea of how the Tibetan Geshes understand this, I’ll never forget an old friend of mine. He was the disciplinarian of Sera Je, an old geshe, well in his eighties now. And the chant master of the Hayagrīva group. And we were talking once, keep in mind he’s a Lharampa Geshe, he’s basically at the top of the monastic hierarchy.

A very good, very hard monk, very hard monk. The hardest disciplinarian, Sera Je had in the post war period. And he said to me, I would love to be able to be a practitioner of the middling scope, but I don’t have the capacity. If I could have become an Arhat, I would have loved to, but I don’t have the strength. Now, what is very striking in that statement is how realistic he is about his own capacities.

This in turn means that his practice is going to be very powerful, because it’s going to be targeted at his actual level, not at the fantasized level. I was very impressed when he said that. He did not claim a Mahāyāna motivation, did not claim to have keep in mind he’d been a monk sixty years. He did not claim basically to be anything but a pious Buddhist who had chosen to become a monk, because he wanted to improve himself over the future lives. Then, this is quite a contrast with many of our students at the center.

The one of which is working on bodhicitta, the other of which is working on renunciation. One must assume they are more advanced than this very fine Geshe. Obviously it’s not the case. Instead, as he said to me once, Westerners use the words but they don’t know the meaning. It is our big fault.

So here it is not because we are covering the path of the being of middling scope that we are beings of the middling scope. A being of the middling scope is an extraordinarily advanced practitioner, and we will be very lucky in our life to meet one. It’s a big thing. And a bodhisattva is a being who is almost inconceivable. The words are easily uttered but the meaning is very difficult to interiorize.

So who would these beings of the middling scope be? Traditionally, the example given is that of the 16 Arhats, and to this day at Sera Je, one of the main prayers against obstructions, is a prayer to these 16 Arhats. What is the mental training of such a being? We started to talk about it last year. First, one must actually identify definite emergence, in other words, renunciation.

What is renunciation? What do we renounce? Why do we renounce it? And one must generate that state of mind. Then how does one generate it?

One generates it through meditating on the two firsts of the four noble truths. The noble truth of the of suffering, and the noble truth of the origin of suffering. Now, until this meditation has been led to a term, one cannot generate renunciation. Renunciation means considering everything all of us now consider pleasant, as of the nature of suffering. It is not an easy state of mind to generate.

And it is only having generated that, that one then meditates on what Chris so rightly called the mechanism of cyclic existence, the 12 links. Which is the mechanism of how one enters into cyclic existence, and also the mechanism of how one can leave cyclic existence, the existence of lives. Then today I will first give you a traditional presentation of the 12 links, and then I will apply it to an empirical case, which was studied by Professor Stevenson, the case of Vijayaratne. I ask you to keep in mind that the empirical application is hypothetical, but I think you will find it quite convincing. So, first, what is meant by dependent arising in a Buddhist context?

We say dependent arising, some say interdependence, some say dependent origination. The meaning is the same. In every single case, we are referring to the Sanskrit term, Pratitya Samutpada. And understanding the linguistic origin of pratitya samutpada is very helpful. It is basically composed of three different components, pratitiya, sam and utpada.

Pratitya basically means to return, sam as in Sangha, the monastic community means to be together with, and utpada is production. So if we were to summarize these three meanings, pratitya samutpada means repeated production. This is a core meaning of dependent arising. Repeated production within non-sentient phenomena, and repeated production within the cycle of lives. Then, it is defined by Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen, the author of Sera Je’s monastic textbooks, as that which is established through relying on its parts.

But I think the etymological definition may be clearer for all of us. Repeated production seems pretty obvious. Now, from a Buddhist standpoint, all phenomena without exception are dependent arisings. And you all remember this famous verse of Ārya Nāgārjuna, in the root verses of Mādhyamika. There is no phenomenon which is not a dependent arising, therefore, there is no phenomenon which is not empty.

From the standpoint of Mādhyamika, specifically of Prāsaṇgika Mādhyamika, the dependent arising and emptiness are synonymous. Dependent arising is if you wish one side of the coin, and emptiness is the other side of the coin. Dependent arising is the positive side of the coin, and emptiness is the negative side of the coin. Emptiness merely means the absence of non dependent arising. Then because it is difficult for us to understand emptiness, it is much easier, less dangerous, and more beneficial to meditate on dependent arising.

There are far less risks. Now generally speaking, dependent arising are subdivided into two. The dependent arising of physical phenomena, which is exterior dependent arising, and the dependent arising of, we would say, living beings, which is interior dependent arising. Fundamentally, we can say that all of Western science focuses on exterior dependent arising. Physics, biology, chemistry are the study of exterior dependent arising.

There’s no particular reason Buddhism should delve any deeper at present in exterior dependent arising, since physics, biology, and chemistry have been so successful in their analysis of the causality of exterior phenomena. When it comes to consciousness, which is seen as a non material phenomenon from the Buddhist standpoint, it’s a very different state of affairs. Here I think to this day, the Buddhist understanding of dependent arising is extraordinarily profound. Now, what does dependent arising basically entail? What are its consequences, let’s say from a philosophical and spiritual standpoint?

The great third century scholar Asaṇga identifies 11 meanings of the dependent arising, and I think you will find that if you meditate upon them your understanding of Buddhist teachings will improve dramatically. These 11 meanings are subsumed into the four seals of suffering, impermanence, selflessness and emptiness. The first of the 11 meanings of dependent arising is the absence of a God, of a creator. If all phenomena are dependent arising, there simply is no place for God. Therefore you cannot be a Buddhist and accept the existence of God.

You will have to choose. Then, the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth all are related to impermanence. The second meaning is that all impermanent phenomena have a cause. The fourth is that all impermanent phenomena are, if you wish, the servants of other phenomena. They arise in dependence on other phenomena.

This impermanence is immutable, it is always there, phenomena change, but this change itself is always occurring. Impermanent, which is basically redundant once you’ve identified the four seals. Instantaneous, in other words, in the light certainly of what we know in modern physics, the rate of change is far superior to anything we could possibly become conscious of. Just out of my memory I think the shortest physical event measured of late occurs within ten minus forty one seconds. This is zero followed by forty one zeros and one seconds.

Then it is something we have no access to. Phenomena change at the atomic and subatomic level with this speed. And also, dependent arising means, according to Asaṇga, that the continuum of causality, which means the continuum of physical phenomena, but also of minds, never ceases. Then it has other meanings. It also refers to the non existence of sentient beings, which teaches selflessness, and it has three meanings which are related to suffering, they are in red here.

The concordance of cause and effect, the difference of cause and effect, and the individual definiteness of cause and effect. What does this mean? The concordance of cause and effect refers to karma. From a virtuous cause happiness will arise, from a non virtuous cause suffering will arise. This is a given.

It is actually in the nature of karma. Yet cause and effect themselves are different. This counters a view of many Indian schools which consider that cause and effect are of the same nature. If you consider that cause and effect are of the same nature, as does for instance Vedanta or Sankhya, you are asserting a universe without true change. When you assert that cause and effect are of different nature, you are asserting a universe within which true change occurs.

For instance, let us take maybe I should ask for another volunteer at present. Does anyone want to be an example? Jade, very good. Then let us take Jade, and as you see Jade is certainly not older than 40 years of age, and cheerful as well. Now, if you take Jade when she was five years of age, and Jade at the age of 40 now, we would all say it’s the same person.

There has been some change, but the person is the same. This is not at all the Buddhist standpoint. From a Buddhist standpoint, Jade at the age of five and Jade at the age of 40 are not only different, they are of different natures. The only thing connecting them is this causal chain. Now not only is Jade at the age of five and Jade at the age of 40 different, but Jade at the age of 39 and 40 are also totally different.

For that matter, jade yesterday and jade today are completely different. And jade at the beginning of this conference and jade now are completely different. Then, what is being asserted is that there is no inner jade. There is no thing inside jade, no ātman, if you wish, which is what the Indians call the soul, which is permanent and which carries jadeness. Instead, there is a stream of physical and mental phenomena, every instant of which is different from the preceding instant.

Thank you very much. I hope I didn’t trouble you too much. You can see that such an outlook is a very disturbing outlook. I must point out this outlook is profoundly compatible with everything we know at present from physics and biology. If there is one religious tradition which is broadly speaking in cinch with contemporary scientific development, it is the Buddhist tradition.

And then finally, you have an individual definiteness of cause and effect, in other words, each karmic cause gives rise to its own specific effect. So what do we mean by interior dependent arising? You remember we spoke of exterior dependent arising, which is the material world, the causal world, the topic of study of science, and interior dependent arising. By interior dependent arising, we refer to our process of becoming over the lives. The process of becoming of our body and mind, in other words, our five aggregates: Form, sensation, discrimination, volition, and or compositional factors, and consciousness.

How they transmigrate from life to life. This is the topic of the 12 limbs. Traditionally symbolized by a wheel with 12 spokes. Now, the topic has been made unduly difficult in my opinion, because one always confuses two types of presentation. The general presentation of the 12 limbs, and the 12 limbs applied to one specific individual through the cycle of lives.

If you keep in mind that you have a general presentation of the 12 limbs, and then a specific presentation applied to one individual, things should be much clearer. So at present we’ll start with a general presentation. And you may remember these from Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen’s presentation a year and a half ago. This is one full cycle of the 12 limbs. In which, the first limb, ignorance, give rise to the second limb, compositional factors, which is karma, gives rise to the third limb, consciousness, gives rise to the fourth limb, name and form, gives rise to the fifth limb, the six loci, the premises of the six senses, gives rise to the sixth limb contact, and then sensation, craving, appropriation, existence, birth and aging and death.

It is through the interweaving of series of the 12 limbs that the cycle of human or actually all sentient existence can be understood. There is nothing else but this, and I shall cover with you at present each of the limbs in as much detail as I can. So it is not insignificant that the first of the 12 limbs is ignorance. Generally speaking, the 12 limbs are the gateway of entry into cyclic existence, and ignorance is actually that through which we reincarnate. It is because of ignorance we reincarnate.

In this matter, I would say without exception, all the Indian traditions agree with the minority position of the materialist, the lokaryatas. They disagree very strongly about what this ignorance is, and the strength of their disagreement is testimony to the importance of understanding what ignorance is before countering it. If you really take reincarnation seriously, and you do sincerely believe that it is a terrible state of affairs, then what actually enables you to escape is not a minor topic. If you have three prisoners in a jail cell who are going to be tortured the next day, and they have three different plans of escape, you can well imagine how intense their debate will be about which of the plans of escape actually works, as opposed to which of the plans of escape is a fantasy. So these debates become powerful once renunciation has been generated within our mind stream.

We do not take them too seriously, because at present we don’t really buy into the system, it’s a bit of a hobby, but once one actually becomes convinced through studying cases of reincarnation, in Stevenson’s work and so forth, that in the best scenario reincarnation is unpleasant, since you die over and over and over and over again, and in the worst of scenarios it’s downright awful, if you were born as an animal in a laboratory for instance, then finding a way out is not a minor issue, and in turn identifying what ignorance is, is not a minor issue. Now each of the 12 links has a symbol, and I’ve tried to find contemporary images of these symbols. The symbol for ignorance is the blind man. One when one is ignorant, one is blind. One does not know.

A blind man cannot see, we do not understand. However, there is considerable disagreement even inside the Buddhist tradition about what exactly this ignorance is. In Abhidharma, ignorance is understood the way you and I understand ignorance, as not knowing how to get to Rambara more. Then this is clearly or cannot be the motor of cyclic existence. You do not reincarnate because you don’t know how to get to Randomore.

Perhaps this is the news for you, but I generally don’t consider them would be incarnate for that reason. Dharmakīrti, the great Buddhist Sautrāntika philosopher, has a different outlook, which is the one I think the Tibetan tradition accepts at present. Ignorance is ignorance of the view of the transitory composite, and the transitory composite really refers to our five aggregates. In other words, our body and mind disintegrating instant by instant and being selfless. Obliviousness to that is ignorance which is being referred to.

Asaṇga considers that ignorance is incompatible with the view, it’s a form of confusion, but it is not necessarily opposite to the view. Now, if we enter into greater detail, you have this quote, think, the Pramānavārttika of Dharmakīrti, in which he says, since the antidote knowledge is knowledge of the authentic, in other words, the object of the selflessness of persons, this is wisdom. It’s antithesis, its opposite in other words, is the view of the transitory collections which apprehends a self of persons. Now the meaning of this difficult passage is, that the ordinary person apprehends the five aggregates, in other words body and mind, as not changing instant by instant, as not being of the nature of suffering, and as having a self. Based on that, they over invest in themselves and in others.

Based on that, love, desire, hatred, anger arise. Once one understands that a person is merely a collection of atoms with a mind connected to it, which is changing instant by instant, with a frequency of one change per ten-forty one seconds, and which in addition is fundamentally of the nature of suffering, what base is there for attachment or anger? There is no base. There’s no foundation. You have cut the root of the afflictions.

So this is Dharmakīrti’s position. Asaṇga and his half brother Vasubandhu, on the other hand, view ignorance in a much more general way. It’s a confusion regarding the view of the authentic, and a mind which does not understand it. It is not, in other words, a mind which is opposite to the view of the authentic, it’s merely a mind which is confused with respect to it. I think you can sense the difference.

If I tell you, the $10,000 I transfer to your bank account is not yours, and I want it back. That is one assertion. But if I tell you, I’m not quite sure whether I should have transferred $10,000 to you or not, let’s assess the situation, it’s a very different situation, isn’t it? Well, the first position is Dharmakīrti’s, the second position is Asaṇga’s. Clearly Dharmakīrti’s position is, I would say, the more convincing position.

Because as you can see, a Sangha asserts that this confusion, this ignorance, can be on a confusion regarding causality, or a confusion regarding emptiness. Now this confusion if it concerns causality, in other words, karma, leads to rebirth in the lower realms because it destroys any foundation of ethics. Whereas if it concerns suchness, it does not necessarily lead to rebirth in the lower realms, but can lead to a rebirth in the higher realms. For instance, someone who is a sincere Christian, Jew, or Muslim would definitely not accept that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence. Such a person necessarily recognizes the existence of an inherently existing God.

But this inherently existing God and his teachings, his commandments, his revealed truths, are the foundation for a practice of ethics, a practice of love and compassion, which from a Buddhist standpoint certainly lead to rebirth in the higher realms. This is why Nāgārjuna says in the Precious Garland, that the two extremes, the extreme of eternalism and the extreme of nihilism, are not symmetrical. The extreme of nihilism, which involves denying the existence of any type of ethical causality, is a view which necessarily leads to rebirth in the lower bands, because over time, not necessarily over a couple years, but over a life, or even a couple lives, the very foundation for moral ethical behavior collapses. But the view of eternalism is actually from a Buddhist standpoint, for practitioners of limited capacities, extremely beneficial. It’s a situation of the brick we talked about at the beginning of this conference.

The brick does not benefit, and you cannot fix a brick by hammering a nail into it. It’s extreme of eternalism. The brick needs as a foundation for any type of ethics, love and compassion, the belief in a creator. That belief is profoundly beneficial. Now, these are from a Buddhist standpoints very powerful arguments, which ban any type of proselytism.

Since not only do you risk not to convert the other party to your own position, but in addition, if they don’t convert and their belief in the religion or the tradition they came from is damaged, the end result is somebody who is neither here nor there. They lost what they had, and they don’t have what you were hoping to give them. So until one is able to assess the mind of another person in the same way as a construction engineer can say this is brick and this is wood, one certainly cannot be forceful in one’s presentation of the teachings, because one can do a great amount of harm. This is why Atisha says that the preliminary to helping others is calm abiding. Until we have calm abiding, it is impossible for us to truly help others.

It’s a fantasy. So as we mentioned, Asaṇga divides confusion into two, confusion regarding karma and causality, which leads to rebirth in the lower realms, and confusion regarding the object of negated, the object of suchness, which leads to rebirth in the higher realms. Asaṇga sees the function of the first limb, the limb of ignorance, as leading to the second limb, the limb of compositional factors or karma. You will find this is Asaṇga’s position in Abhidharmasamuccaya. I have presented them for the sake of completeness, but you’ll find that Asaṇga’s positions are not terribly helpful.

I find personally Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definitions much more interesting and richer. Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen is the author of Sera Je’s monastic textbooks. He defines ignorance within the 12 limbs, not ignorance in general, as a mental factor, ignorant regarding suchness, which has become the motivation of projecting karma, subsumed within one series of dependent arisings with itself. We’re to analyze these definitions. These definitions in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition are very similar to mathematical theorems, for those of you who have a scientific background.

They are memorized, they are generally one doesn’t get at a definition in a haphazard way, it is a product of analysis by scholars sometime over centuries. And once they are memorized, are investigated in debate. Generally speaking, each word in Tibetan has a specific meaning. It’s exactly as a mathematical theorem. The integral of x3, let’s say, is x four on four, every single term here has a very precise meaning.

So here, what is ignorance? It’s a mental factor, in other words, it’s not a main mind. It is a subsidiary mind which coexists with a main mind. What is it ignorant of? It is ignorant of suchness.

In other words, Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen adopts Dharmakīrti’s position and not Asaṇga’s position. Why is such an ignorance the first of the 12 limbs? Because it has become the motivation of the projecting karma. The projecting karma referred to here is the second of the 12 limbs. Compositional factor.

So ignorance, the first limb, has become the motivation of compositional factors. It is what gives rise to karma. As we mentioned, once you misunderstand the nature of the transitory composite, another person, and you view that other person’s five aggregates, their body and their four mental aggregates, as permanent, as happy, as beautiful, and as clean, in dependence on this love and desire arise. If on the other hand, you view them as hateful, because this person has deprived you of what you want, in dependence on this hatred arises. This is how ignorance gives rise to the delusions which create karma.

Now, it has become the motivation of projecting comma, the projecting karma here is a second link, which is subsumed within one series of dependent arisings with itself simply means that it has not become the motivation of any karma in saṃsāra and nirvana, but only a karma within one given cycle of 12 links, of which there are billions within our continuum. Actually countless numbers within our continuum. So as you can see the metaphor of ignorance, a blind man is a very powerful one. A blind man is ignorant he does not see. He does not see what visible objects.

Likewise, with ignorance the question one must ask, and this is what all the great Indian practitioners, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, have asked is, ignorance, yes, but ignorance of what? What is it which binds us to cyclic existence? This is the core question. This what is what is known technically as the object of negation or the object of refutation. This ignorance then leads to karma, and you could almost say that from that point onwards all the Indian traditions agree.

The Indian traditions disagree about this. Then they don’t present the 12 links, it’s a specific Buddhist presentation, but they could have. There’s no reason you couldn’t have a Vedanta presentation of the 12 links, perfectly compatible. But they would disagree fundamentally about the ignorance which gives rise to these 12 links. This is the core question.

Just as the core question in western spiritual traditions has always been, what leads to salvation? Is it faith in God? Is it faith in a God incarnated in a man? What leads to salvation? And if you don’t believe in salvation, the question is meaningless for you, as it has become, I’d say for most westerners.

In India the question was what led to moksha? What led to liberation, then if you don’t believe in liberation, you don’t believe in the past and existence of past and future lives, and you don’t believe that these past and future lives are something one must try to be liberated from, question is meaningless, No point in asking it. But if one profoundly believes, then the question is the most important question there is. There’s a core question in all the English traditions is what ignorance? This is not a question which is asked in the Judeo Christian traditions, where knowledge is actually seen as almost sinful.

Then the second link is a link of compositional factors, in other words, Karma. And the metaphor used is that of a potter. Just as a potter creates a vase, Karma creates a life, an existence, a rebirth. There are, as I mentioned last year, two types of karma. The karma which creates a life, and the karma which fleshes out the details of that life.

The karma which projects a life, it’s a technical term, is projecting Karma. That defines a human rebirth, an animal rebirth, a rebirth as a spirit, or whatever. Completing Karma fleshes out that life, the details. You, all of us in this room, have had the projecting karma of being reborn as a human being. Some of us are male, some of us are female.

This is a result of completing karma. Some are rich, some are poor, this is a result of completing karma. Some have powerful minds, some don’t have powerful minds, it’s a result of completing karma. Some will lead a long life, some will die young. This is also with the result of completing karma.

All the details of an existence are covered by completing karma. The 12 links only concerns projecting karma. When ignorance, the first of the 12 links, starts a cycle of 12 links, it defines a rebirth, not the details in that rebirth. The details in that rebirth are filled out by various other aspects of comma, from a Buddhist standpoint you could almost say they are trivial. From our standpoint definitely not.

Now projecting comma, in other words the karma which we refer to within the context of the second limb, is subdivided into two, comma giving rise to a higher, and comma giving rise to a lower rebirth. And as you know, positive karma in turn can give rise to two different categories of rebirth, what is known as immutable karma, which gives rise to a rebirth as a god, this karma can only be generated through concentration. One must have attained the first dhyana, which is basically beyond śamatha, to be able to be reborn in those realms, one is reborn as an immaterial entity. And karma which projects rebirth in the realm of desire. The projecting karma we all have in this room, which led to this life, is that category of karma.

In a past life, we engaged in virtuous deeds, as a result of this we have been reborn as human beings. We did not engage in advanced meditative practices, otherwise we would not have been reborn as human beings. The key feature of immutable karma is that once someone reaches the first dhyana, they are basically impervious to desire. Desire may still be present in a latent form, but the person is impervious to it, and this enables them to be reborn as formless beings. From a Buddhist standpoint, the great gods taught in all of the world religions are beings in this realm.

Spiritual beings, which were reincarnated there millions and millions of years ago, as a result of extraordinary capacities in concentration. So, Asaṇga affirms that the function of the second limb is merely to subdivide beings in the five or the six realms. Karma, in other words, acts as the dividing line between the realms, and is also the cause for the third limb. This is not very informative, but Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definition is much more informative. Comma, the second limb is the intention, which is a mental factor projecting later another existence, and motivated by ignorance.

So it is an intention, it is a mental event initially. A mental factor, in other words, it’s not a prime mind, is associated to a main mind, such as, for instance, my visual consciousness perceiving the image of Buddha Śākyamūni at present, would be a main mind. Then the ignorance which thinks that Buddha Śākyamūni basically exists from his own side would be a mental factor associated with that visual consciousness. And if looking at Buddha Śākyamūni, I mentally rejoice in the virtues he has engaged in, that would be the second limb, the limb of karma, also a mental factor associated with seeing the image of Buddha Śākyamūni. So the function of this second limb is to project, in other words, to create later another rebirth.

And as said, it is motivated by ignorance, and an ignorance which is part of the same cycle of 12 limbs. So I won’t re explain this one over and again, but what is meant here is that each one of the links where it is defined is part of one single cycle of these 12 links linked to it. Now this one cycle, as we’ll see at the end of the conference, can spread out over two lives or three lives, and these two or three lives can be separated by no time at all, in other words the second life follows the first, or they can be separated by billions of years between each other, it makes no difference. Something is created several billion years ago, and matures several billion years in the future, or something is created in the last life and matures in this life. There is nothing else to a person than this continual process of maturation.

And finally I represent before the break the third limb, the limb of consciousness. The metaphor for which is a monkey, which is very appropriate when we think of how our own minds function. A monkey is an extremely agitated creature, which is totally subsumed by its senses. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a monkey in the wild or even in the zoo, but if you show a monkey a banana, it has something close to single point of concentration on the banana. In other words, the monkey is overwhelmed by its senses.

This is a state of our mind at present. In the case of human beings, are overwhelmed by the visual sense. My dogs are overwhelmed by their olfactory sense. Now, which consciousness is the one referred to within the 12 limbs? I’ll be a bit more technical than in my previous conferences, since we are creating here a study center.

It depends of the school of tenets. Most of the school of tenets say that it’s mental consciousness, which is the consciousness in which karma is deposed. But there is one school of Buddhist tenets which has been extraordinarily influential in China and Japan, the mind basis of all school, it underlies Zen tradition, it underlies some of the other Chinese traditions like Tiantai. For that school, there is a mind underlying all other minds. It is invisible to us, if you wish, we do not experience it, but its function is to be the field in which karma is sown.

It is according to that school that which goes from life to life. All the Buddhist schools have had to answer the question, what transmigrates? For the Indian schools, it’s easy. What transmigrates? The soul.

The Ātman. But for the Buddhist schools, if you don’t accept the existence of a soul, you don’t accept in other words the existence of a core, what transmigrates? You have to give something, Then all the Buddhist schools have said, it is a sequence of instance of minds and nothing else which transmigrates, and that sequence is connected, or each element of that sequence is connected with each other in the same way as each link of a chain is connected with the previous link. And some schools say that it is mental consciousness, some that it is the mind basis of all. To this day there’s an ongoing debate in the Buddhist tradition.

However, consciousness within the 12 limbs is subdivided into two, and this is not a majority position, it’s a bit of a minority position, but it’s a very interesting one. Consciousness at the time of the cause, and consciousness at the time of the effect. Consciousness at the time of the cause is consciousness within the lifetime in which the karmic imprint is placed into consciousness. In other words, we have the first link ignorance, because the second link, the karmic input which arises from ignorance, that is placed into a consciousness, that consciousness which receives it, is consciousness at the time of the cause, and in a future life, the first instant of consciousness in that future life would be consciousness at the time of the effect. So according to those who accept this, and Je Tsongkhapa does accept this, the third limb of consciousness has two components: one which is fully a part of the third limb, and one which is not.

I should point out that this position, and it’s very awkward because you can’t really disagree with Je Tsongkhapa directly, but this position is not referred to at all by Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen, the author of the Sera Je monastic textbooks, in his presentation of the 12 limbs, which is a way of intimating that he doesn’t agree with it. You could agree directly, but you don’t have to mention it. It’s entirely up to you whether you agree with it or not. I am dubious myself, it seems unnecessary, but some scholars seem to feel that it provides some advantages. And the function of consciousness according to our Sangha, as we said, is to contain comma, in other words the second limb, and to be the condition for the fourth limb, which is name and form.

Now, if we look at the definition of consciousness, given by Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen, and these are really as you can see much more informative, Consciousness is a main mind, so up to now all the limbs we saw were secondary minds, mental factors. Consciousness is the first main mind, and this main mind is oriented or suffused if you went wish by the imprint of the second link of the orienting karma. So this consciousness is a little bit, if you want, like a balloon full of a neutral gas, let’s say let’s say nitrogen, and that neutral gas is basically odorless, nitrogen is pretty inactive chemically, and then you release within that a colored gas, I don’t let’s say, and suddenly it turns orange ish. Then the nitrogen will be consciousness, you can’t see it, you really don’t know it’s there, until it acts as a support for this color. Color is common.

Then I was saying to some friends a while ago that there are some problems in the translation of karmic imprints in English. Because when you say an imprint, think of something like a footprint or a paw print in the soil. It all sounds terribly physical and solid. But the Sanskrit term is vasana, and I think you will never guess, maybe the ladies have a chance, but the rest of us will never guess what Vāsanā actually derives from in Sanskrit. What is the thing women like most as a gift?

Yes. Who said perfume? Yes, that is the meaning of asana in Sanskrit. What we translate as karmic imprints in Sanskrit is a scent, a perfume. It is that which suffuses the mind.

Then if you reflect on that, it’s a very different image of karma than the clods of a cow, isn’t it? It’s something which colors the mind. You are oblivious to it because you don’t see tinted glasses when you wear them, do you? Then I think we shall stop here for the tea break, and I reassure you it gets a bit easier as we go on. Into a book, then I wrote a very long introduction which basically is drawn from my conferences here, you know, and the book was presented to his son as a Dalai Lama in India, so he’s fixing.

Then I’m going to try to make it easier because when I said to our director Chris at 03:14 that it was time, he looked at me with a very worried look on his face, he could say there’s another minute and this is this is a very bad sign if you give conferences, know, if you have to drag the people kicking and screaming back into the audience, so then there’s a problem, you know, but it’s going to get a lot easier and this is not an easy topic, but once you see it applied at the end of this talk, think you’re going to sit back and think how come I didn’t know about this for so long? You have to see it applied, and there’s only one way to go about is to present each of the 12 links in this way and then I think if you look back at the definitions suddenly all of this will become quite powerful quite powerful so as you remember in the first part we covered the first of the three links which are ignorance, compositional factors, and consciousness, and these lead to a link which may sound a bit mysterious known as name and form.

Name and form is the egg or the embryo at conception. Name refers to the four mental aggregates which are sensation, discrimination, composition of factors, and consciousness. Form refers to the body, and this is symbolized by a boat or a coracle because it is the boat which receives, if you wish, the inhabitant consciousness. Now name and form, as I said, is subdivided into form or matter, which is a physical aggregate, in this case the egg at conception, the fertilized egg, and the four mental aggregates. Asaṇga merely positions name and form between the aggregate of consciousness and the subsequent aggregate of the six loci.

So before I give you the definition of Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen, I have to explain a concept which is heavily used in Buddhist logic, which has an exact parallel in mathematics in set theory. Has anyone here ever studied set theory out of curiosity? A little bit. Anyone? Yes.

Anybody else? Yes. So it’s not going to be completely alien, I’ll explain as simply as I can. It’s a notion of common locus or common denominator. A common locus or common denominator is something which is shared by two or three groups of things.

Now groups of things in mathematics are called sets. So if you have three sets or three groups A, B and C, what is known in mathematics as the intersection of a b and c is this area here, because whatever is here belongs to a, to b, and belongs to c, right? The mathematicians call this the intersection of the three sets A, and C. In Buddhist logic we call this the common locus. Now Buddhist definitions are very frequently presented in terms of intersection of sets, so you have to have the concept in mind to understand the definition because is the notion of intersection clear like you have one group of people who owns a car a second group of people who owns a house, and a third group of people who is married, then the person who owns a car owns a house and is married belongs to all three groups and is in other words at the intersection of all three groups, he is the common look, he or she is common locus of all three groups.

Like there are sets which have no intersection, in Australia for instance there are two sets which are famous for having no intersection the set of members of the Liberal Party, you know the Labor Party right, you cannot be both. So the definition of name and form according to Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen is a dependent arising, so far so good, which is thoroughly afflicted, in other words, which was produced through comma, which is afflicted karma contaminated by ignorance, and which is the common locus, in other words the intersection of three sets. It is the projected effect, in other words it’s the result of a projecting karma, which projecting comma, The third link, the previous link of karma, which is subsumed within one series of dependent arisings with itself. It has been taken just after conception, conception here refers to the conception of a living being, so the contact between the spermatozoa and the ovum, and it abides in the type of previous aggregates. Previous aggregates here simply refer to the fact that this egg in this case, name and form, actually is the result of karma which would generate such aggregates.

So something which has those three characteristics qualifies as name and form. Now what does this mean? What does this refer to? It sounds extremely complicated. It actually refers to the first six to eight weeks after conception.

Therefore to the period between the moment when the spermatozoa enters in contact with the surface of the oocyte, and you can see here a fetus at four weeks. Now, why this period basically up to approximately six to eight weeks after conception? Because it is a period from the instant in which the projecting karma has defined a life, a type of life, which is conception. At conception, whether the life is human, animal, let’s say rebirth as a dog, rebirth as a cat, rebirth as a man, defined beyond doubt. And the moment immediately preceding the dawn of the sense organs.

As you can see, at six or eight weeks, the early manifestations of the sense organs are still not there. So this stage of embryological development is what is known as name and form. It’s a stage which stretches approximately up to the second months, and I would like in this context to present the Buddhist understanding of gestation in birth according to the Garbhavakranti Sūtra, it is quite haunting because everyone agrees the sūtra is at least 2,000 years old for the Buddhist it is 25 centuries old and was taught by Buddha Śākyamūni, Western scholars trace it back to the beginning of the Christian era, but it describes a process of gestation which is almost exactly that which has been ascertained at present through ultrasound examination of fetal development and so forth. Before doing this, however, I’d like to present the four types of birth from a Buddhist standpoint. Traditionally, it is taught that there are four different births, and if we understand their meaning, is quite interesting.

Births through heat and moisture, birth through an egg, through a womb, or miraculous birth. Now birth through heat and moisture refers to non-saturated births, either unicellular or multicellular. So it refers, in our modern terms, to what we would know as mitosis and meiosis, in other words the two processes of subdivision of the cell, right, and multicellular reproduction such as reproduction by budding and so forth which you see in algae or for that matter in plankton. Plankton as you know has two modes of reproduction. Reproduction by egg is oviparous reproduction.

This is a term we would use in contemporary biology, all the way from the chicken to that very strange animal, the platypus. And reproduction from a womb would be mammalian reproduction, sexual reproduction, so oviparous, this is egg reproduction, and mammalian reproduction are sexual forms of reproduction. Then miraculous birth is not recognized by any of the canons of Western science, it is the process of birth which leads to rebirth in the divine realms, it is also the process of rebirth in many of the hell realms, It’s a case where actually the person just appears. There are no parents in the full sense of the term, you may or may not accept this, if you accept the existence of divine realms and of the hells, you do have to think about how one might be reborn there. Therefore, a Buddhist standpoint one just manifests, and this is what is referred to as miraculous birth.

Now in the Buddhist understanding of the period before, during conception, and immediately after conception, what happens? And this is basically the transition from the third to the fourth link. A Bardo being, though the being of the intermediate state, is attracted by two parents who have corresponding karma. It sees those two parents involved in sexual intercourse. At this point, and you it is surprising how Freudian this is, if the Bardo being is male, it feels desire for the female partner and hatred for the male partner.

If the Bardo being is female, it feels desire for the male partner and hatred for the female partner. And the Bardo being at that point sees the womb as a place of refuge. It sees it metaphorically as one of the six destinations excuse me. It sees its present environment as fearsome, as cold, windy, rainy, cloudy, foggy, and noisy, and it sees the womb as one of 10 places of shelter. It can be a house, a cave, a pond.

This depends on the karma of the bardo being. Impaired on the one hand by fear of its environment and a desire to enter the womb which is seen as a house in one form or the other, the borrowed being then dies. This death of the borrowed being is a direct result of the two afflictions: lust and hatred. And this death of the Bardo being is conception. When the Bardo being enters into the fertilized egg, in other words, here at this point it loses consciousness.

Its life as a bardo being ceases and the new life begins. This is the limb of name and form within that cycle of the 12 lives is that clear Buddha Śākyamūni says in the Garbhavakanti Sūtra that in no way does he encourage the fostering and of children and reproduction. Now this obviously is something which is a profoundly Buddhist as an outlook. We ourselves see the birth of a child as a happy occurrence, Buddhists would see it as an unfortunate event, the perpetuation of the cycle of suffering. This clearly or the difference with our outlook arises from the fact that our understanding of suffering is very different, since for us suffering is basically pain, physical or mental, whereas in the Buddhist sense suffering is a far larger concept which encompasses much of what we know as happiness, simply because it changes, it fades, and that changing and fading is experienced by great suffering.

For instance, if you take the case of this country, you are on the tail end of a mining boom. Then the peaking of the mining boom was experienced as a state of great happiness. The government was handing out benefits, concessions, the banks were lending, right? It was easy to buy what was mortared, and now at the tail end contraction has become. The banks are more demanding, the government is talking of cutting benefits, and this decline from a high level of happiness to frankly what remains a very comfortable state of affairs is experienced by many as great suffering.

I mean we do see it at the center. So it is for this reason that happiness from a Buddhist standpoint is also seen as suffering, because it’s not a permanent state of affairs. You over invest yourself and then a very short decline, very small decline in this happiness leads to tremendous mental suffering. Now returning to the Garbhavakanti Sūtra’s account of gestation, it’s quite striking. Keep in mind there were no microscopes, no electron microscopes, no ultrasound, no echography, nothing.

The first five weeks the embryo is described first like cream covered milk, then as in the second week as viscous outside and inside, in the third week as fleshy but unable to support pressure, in the fourth week as harder, and in the fifth week the sūtra teaches that the protuberances for the legs and arms appear. We are still here within the limb of name and form. Now if we look at the modern account of fecundation, it’s surprisingly similar. The oocyte is normally fecundated inside the fallopian tubes, and then the fertilized egg starts to divide by mitoses. This process of division leads to an entity which is extremely fragile, a multicellular entity of blastocyte, you know, which basically eventually has a slight covering on it, very much akin to cream on top of milk.

And this continues for up to two weeks, and then eventually the blastocyte starts to take form, and once one enters into the second month, you have the gradual appearance, in other words the eighth week, of the protuberances of the limbs, always according to this sūtra. By the ninth week the sense orifices appear. This is the boundary between the limb of name and form and the next limb of the six sources. The limb of the six sources begins when the orifices of the sense organs appear, that the sense organs are still not functional, but they become visible, and I will show you some pictures later on, it is quite striking. Then according to the sūtra, at the end of the third month the intestines of the joints appear, by the beginning of the fourth month sensations appear.

This is a point where the limb of sensation, the fifth, the sixth limb, would begin. Sensations of hunger and thirst, and in the twentieth week, bones start to be produced. Then by the twenty seventh week, in the seventh month, the fetus, according to the sūtra, starts to experience the effects of karma. In the twenty eighth week, the fetus experiences its womb as a house, a vehicle, a park, a tower, a grove, a seat, a river, a pond. This is all mental experiences of the fetus contingent on its own past karma.

The enclosure of the womb is experienced like a dwelling. In the eighth month, the past karma of the fetus affects its physical appearance, its face. I’ll show you some, echographies, it’s very striking. And by the thirty sixth week, the beginning of the ninth month, the fetus becomes profoundly unhappy in the womb. It experiences in the following week the womb as unclean and dark, and at the end of the ninth month a wind, in other words an energy from the Buddhist standpoint, causes a fetus to turn upside down, as you know children are born with their heads downwards, otherwise there are great complications, and progressively prepares it out of the vagina.

Now keep in mind this account of gestation was made by Buddhist scholars or the Buddha himself without any access to any scientific lab or any scientific equipment. It corresponds to the medical account of gestation within one month. The difference of one month in my opinion is due to the fact that Buddhists count the time of birth from conception, then therefore, you know, they would basically extrapolate the time of conception from the time of birth. This is not something which was done by Western doctors. Now to show you how different and how radically new this presentation is, keep in mind that until the end of the eighteenth century in the West, the vision of the development of the fetus was that of a little human being which is really tiny at the beginning, a homunculi as he was called, which kept growing but proportionately right in the womb until he was large enough to get out.

It’s radically different, and a scholar Robert Kritzer who studied these texts, who is not a Buddhist, points out that he really has no understanding of how it was possible to describe the growth of the fetus in such detail. In my personal opinion, without access to meditative super knowledges, is impossible, since even through extensive dissection the early stages would be impossible to discern with the naked eye. So this covers the limb of name and form, which is as we said the period in the development of the fetus from conception up to the appearance of the sense orifices, in other words up to approximately the eighth week. This is followed by the six The six loci are symbolized by an empty house, the windows of which represent the senses. Then I would perhaps skip this is purely etymological, and go directly to Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definition of the six loci limb, which is a thoroughly afflicted, in other words, dependent arising which arises from contaminated karma.

It’s a projected effect, of which projecting comma, the third limb, still part of the same limb of 12 links, which is grasped after the simile of the completion of the six senses. This is one of the two critical aspects of this definition. The six senses are complete but they are not functional. In other words, you have the orifices, the process of completion of the six senses has begun, but it not yet possible for the fetus to experience smells, sounds, tactile sensations, and so forth, And as a result, it is unable to enjoy an experience of the object through the conflation, in other words a connection, of the object of perception itself, let’s say in the case of a fetus, the warmth of the womb, the sense organ, the tactile sense organ, and consciousness, tactile consciousness. So these three are present, but they are unable yet to experience, and this corresponds in the development of the fetus approximately to the period in the fourth month.

You can see at sixteen weeks that clearly the orifices are there, the beginning of the eye sense organ is visible, we can see also the beginning of the olfactory sense organ and the gustatory sense organ, but they still seem nascent. They are, in other words, in keeping with Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definition, a simile. They are not complete. So what is the difference between the fourth limb of name and form and the fifth limb of the sixth loci? In other words this period between basically the first of the eighth week, and then the period broadly around up to the sixteenth week.

Je Tsongkhapa says that when the limb of name and form is established, in other words, from conception up to the eighth week, one has attained a physical nature, one has a body. Whereas when the limb of the sixth loci is established, the enjoyer or the experience is established, there is not yet experience, but the possibility of experience of the senses is present and this will become very clear in the next slide This is a difference between the limb of name and form and the limb of the six loci. Here you have a fetus without any indication of sense organs, and this period extends from conception basically up to the eighth ninth week. From the eighth or ninth week onwards the sense organs start to appear, and this extends up to beyond the sixteenth week. They appear, but they are not yet functional.

Then Je Tsongkhapa’s great commentator, Pänchen Chökyi Gyaltsen, distinguishes the four limbs from the fourth to the seventh as follows: name and form is the establishment of physicality, as we said, and with the sixth loci the features of the body which are the senses are created, but there is yet as yet no contact with the sense objects. It is during the sixth limb that contact occurs, and during the seventh limb that the experience of contact, sensation, occurs. At this point the experiencer or the enjoyer is complete. So these four limbs, which are often profoundly misunderstood and presented in a very confusing way, refer to four different stages in the development of the embryo from conception, up to the point where it becomes a sensate entity. Then the limb which follows, as we said, is contact, at this point, and this is traditionally, excuse me, symbolized by a kiss, at this point sense consciousness, sense object, and sense organ not only come together, but there is an experience, and this experience of the sense object by the sense consciousness through the sense organ is what is actually known as contact.

So you will see that Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definition is extraordinarily precise. I don’t know, to be frank with you, of any embryologist in 2014 who is able to make distinctions of this accuracy. And keep in mind this is a 25 century old tradition. The limb of contact is a projected effect. Yes, a projected effect of what?

Of the third limb, the limb of compositional factors. It is able to enjoy the conflation of object sense object sense organ and consciousness and it knows the causes of happy suffering and neutral sensations, such as food in the case of the fetus, the experience of nourishment from the mother via the umbilical cord. This limb is beautifully represented by this picture. In this picture, what is the difference between the sixth limb of contact and the fifth limb of the sixth loci? The fetus is sucking its thumb, in other words it experiences sucking the thumb as a pleasurable sensation.

The sense organs are not merely complete there is conflation of the object in this case the thumb, the tactile organ of the lips, the tactile consciousness. This is a limb of contact, and this occurs approximately at twenty weeks, in other words in the fifth month. The limb following contact is a limb of sensation, traditionally symbolized by a man wounded by an arrow, in this case two arrows, in the eyes, symbolizing the profoundly suffering nature of sensation from a Buddhist standpoint. Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen defines sensation as a mental factor, as most of the preceding links, except for the third limb, which is a main consciousness, and the difference between the limb of sensation and the previous limb of contact is it actually experiences these pleasant or unpleasant sensations as delight, torment, or as an intermediate sensation there is in other words an involvement in the sense experience. And this involvement in the sense experience is very striking You can see it very clearly on echographies of fetuses between the twenty seventh and the thirty second week.

Here you can see clearly a fetus at thirty two weeks manifesting a sensation of happiness reflected on the face. Likewise here, an expression of pain. This would correspond exactly to the limb of sensation. These are very recent pictures by a British researcher, Nadja Reissland. Now these experiences, so as you remember, we have name and form the fourth limb which is conception, then after conception, some eight weeks after conception, we have the limb of the six loci, the beginning of the formation of the sense organs, are non functional, but which have appeared, and this leads eventually to the sixth limb of contact.

At contact the sense organs are formed, there is an object and a consciousness experiencing that object to the sense organs. This leads to the following developmental stage, the seventh limb of sensation, during which there is an experience of pleasant or unpleasant sensations, and this experience of pleasant or unpleasant sensations leads eventually to the eighth limb. Now what is critical from a Buddhist standpoint is that all of the limbs up to this limb can occur without ignorance. In other words, even an Arhat experiences happy and unhappy sensations. Otherwise, if an Arhat could not discriminate between having his hand burned and his hand stroked, he would obviously not have valid cognition.

However, the following limb, the limb of craving, can only occur through ignorance, and it is symbolized by a man drinking beer precisely because once you start drinking, especially in the old days, as you know, they added salt to the beer, then you can’t stop. So this is getting hooked, if you wish, unpleasant sensations. What is craving? The limb of craving is wishing not to be bereft of pleasant sensations and wishing to be free of sensations of suffering. This can only be present with ignorance.

This starts in fetal development approximately around the thirtieth week, the twenty fifth to the thirtieth week, immediately after the limb of sensation. And it is defined by Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen as a desire. Craving is the desire which plants and nourishes the imprint of the projecting karma. Which projecting karma? The karma back from the third limb.

This desire causes this karma to increase in strength. By means of any of the three sensations, which are the sensation of pleasant sensations, unpleasant, and neutral sensations. The craving for pleasant sensations, the craving to be free of unpleasant sensations, and the craving to experience neither, to just be left alone perhaps, would basically be what feeds the third link, what’s the second link actually, what feeds karma. So you can see in this diagram that the sixth and the seventh limb can arise without ignorance. They are present in Arhat, but the eighth limb necessarily requires ignorance because the eighth limb is of the nature of desire.

It is this eighth limb which causes the great increase in karma, which eventually leads to the ninth limb appropriation, symbolized by picking fruit, which actually refers to the ever greater increase in karma which is going to trigger the comma of birth. Then appropriation is subdivided normally into four. The most common form of appropriation is simply desire for any sense object. Objects you can see, smell, hear, taste, or touch. But interestingly enough, appropriation can also occur through wrong views, wrong ethics, or grasping at a self or a soul.

And I will give you an example at the end of this conference, it’s very striking. Now why would this be the case? You can see clearly that desire would feed karma. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Evil views, such as for instance the view that a non virtuous deed is virtuous, would also feed karma.

I remember in Adelaide I was before I met Mandy and she had a car, I had a cab driver pick me up in Rundle Mall and, it’s very interesting to talk to cab drivers, you know, they have an experience of life most of us don’t have, so I was chatting with this driver, very nice young man, and he told me he was from Afghanistan. And it’s very presentable, you know, just you would never guess. And at one moment, we the conversation went really well, and I asked him, basically, what is the core value of Afghani culture, of Afghani society? Like, if you were to ask Australians, perhaps it would be mateship, isn’t it? But what would be the core value of Afghanistan?

And he went very silent and he said revenge. Vengeance. Then I was a bit nonplussed and I said, Really? Can you build a society on vengeance as a value? He said, Yes.

He said, Really, in my culture, that is the beginning, the middle and the end of a human life. You have revenged, have taken vengeance against those who have harmed you, you are someone who is known as someone who is able to take vengeance, and in the future you will relentlessly take vengeance if you are harmed. Now this is a clear case of such an evil view this is seen as something good profoundly good beneficial it’s a sign of honor in the society. Now this for instance, would lead to a great increase in karmic imprints, if for instance one had killed someone and instead of feeling remorse, one felt a profound sense of satisfaction, and this is just what should be done I will be praised by my society I have behaved in keeping with know the values of my ancestors, this would be a case of appropriation which would lead to a great increase in the karma of killing. Grasping at wrong ethics and conduct as supreme would also occur for instance in many religions, many of the more primitive religions believe that sacrifice is the key to the favor of the gods, and lest you believe that this is only the case of primitive tribes, keep in mind that in Judaism much of Judaism up to the Age of Christ was sacrificial.

If one committed a fault, one went to the temple, and one sacrificed in function of the fort, a sheep, or a dove, or even an oxen, and one rejoiced greatly in the sacrifice. And the Roman historians Flavius Josephus, who described the Temple Of Jerusalem as reeking of blood and decaying flesh. Now someone who performs these sacrifices and is convinced that they lead to divine favor and to perhaps grace even and dies with this in mind is someone which has taken a relatively small karma, the karma of killing an animal, but through a very powerful appropriation has led to a great increase in this karma. And then the view of the self obviously underlies all of these. Clearly if one performs whether either a virtuous or a non virtuous deed and there’s a very powerful sense of I which arises at the end of one’s life, this very powerful sense of I will dynamize this virtuous or non virtuous karma.

That dynamization is what is referred to by the limb of appropriation, the ninth limb. And it is for this reason that Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen says that the limb of appropriation leads to an inordinate increase in the previous limb of craving. The previous limb, the eighth limb of craving, was a limb of desire, but in the ninth limb this desire becomes greatly increased. This great increase is the preliminary to the activation of a comma leading to rebirth. And it has the capacity, the powerful capacity to plant and nourish the imprint of the projecting karma.

This is the imprint of the second link of compositional factors. So when this limb of appropriation is present, the ninth limb is present, the karma leading immediately to rebirth is activated, and this is called existence. It has actually, it’s technically not existence, it is the second of the two karmas within the 12 limbs. It is the karma which triggers rebirth as a human being, as an animal, as a hell being, whatever. It is a previous compositional factor, the second limb, which placed the redolence of karma, in other words the scent of karma, on consciousness, and it became capable of leading to a future existence of tenth limb through being nourished by the two limbs we talked about craving and appropriation.

So craving, which is desire, and appropriation, which is even greater desire or hatred or wrong views, lead to the activation of a previous karma, and that activation which triggers another life is what is referred to by the tenth limb. Asaṇga has a rather clear, as we say at last, rather clear presentation here that the limb of existence causes sentient beings to be oriented towards another existence, and is the condition of birth. It is the maturation of the karma sown in the third limb which has led it to the point where it can trigger a full rebirth as any of the beings of the six realms, the hell realms, the pretas, human beings, demigods, gods, animals. So the definition of existence as you can see here is that it is a karma. It’s got nothing to do with existence.

It’s a case, Je Tsongkhapa says, of calling a cause by the name of the result. It’s a karma which projects a new life after being dynamized through craving and appropriation. In other words, dynamized or enhanced through desire and a tremendous increase in desire or wrong views. Je Tsongkhapa says it’s a case of imputing to a cause a comma, name of the result which is the existence it gives rise to. Then the eleventh and the twelfth limb are fairly self evident.

Birth can be a human and animal rebirth, or for that matter rebirth from an egg, a miraculous rebirth, even it would seem rebirth from heat and moisture. Asaṇga says that the function of birth is actualizing this whole set of limbs from conception, in other words name and form, generation, initial latent generation of the sixth sense organs, the five sense organs of the mental sense organ, contact and sensation. And if we look at Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definition, it becomes much clearer. It’s the thoroughly afflicted, in other words influenced by the view of ignorance, dependent arising, which gives rise to conception into existence at birth, in other words birth, under the power of the previous dependent arising of existence, in other words, under the power of the tenth link of comma, greatly enhanced or increased by the ninth link of appropriation, which had been fostered by the eighth link of craving. Do you get a sense of how this unfolds?

It’s an extremely subtle presentation of the process of maturation of one karmic imprints. And this is followed by the link of aging and death. Now what is striking is that from the Buddhist standpoint, the link of birth, the eleventh link, stops at the instant when the child is born, and from that instant onwards the child is seen as aging and dying. Aging and death therefore stretches from the first hour of existence until it’s the case of a human being the ninetieth year. The what we call growing is actually seen as aging and a continuous process of dying and decay.

So the function of aging and birth is simply to link sentient beings over and again to aging and a change in vitality, The change in vitality is obviously the process of aging. And as Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen’s definition makes very clear, aging occurs from the second instance instant after birth. This makes for a marvelous topic of meditation. If you consider the second instant after birth as already leading inevitably to death, your outlook on this life will be profoundly different. The definition on the other hand of death is the relinquishing, in other words the abandonment, of aggregates of maturation.

This refers to the five aggregates taken at the time of the fourth limb of name and form. At conception, time of the fourth limb of name and form, one takes one physical aggregate one’s body and four mental aggregates. When these aggregates are abandoned, in other words when consciousness leaves this body, death has occurred. From a Buddhist standpoint, as you know, the understanding of death is somewhat different from that of Western medicine. Western medicine considers that the signs of death are basically cessation of breathing, cessation of the heartbeat, and more recently, that the person is brain dead.

In other words, one checks with an EEG, there’s no electrical activity of the brain. These are normally sufficient criteria for engaging, for instance, in operations to remove organs for a transplant. From a Buddhist standpoint, these are merely the sign that coarse physical life has ceased, but that cycle of the 12 limbs would still not be complete from a Buddhist standpoint, because consciousness would still stay in the body for ordinary beings for some three days or so, and for advanced meditative practitioners up to three weeks, and until the specific signs of departure of consciousness from that body have occurred, that person will from a Buddhist standpoint still be alive, and that cycle of the 12 limbs would not be complete. Then, to conclude this presentation of the 12 limbs, I thought I would quote directly from the sūtra which teaches them, the Salistamba Sūtra. It’s the most powerful and clear presentation of the 12 limbs I know.

And it focuses on the difficult limbs. Limbs one to three are not particularly difficult, but limbs six, seven and so forth are difficult. The conflation of three phenomena is contact. Which three phenomena? Sense consciousness, sense organ, and sense object.

The experience is sensation. The predilection for that sensation is craving. The increase of that craving is appropriation. The karma which generates birth is existence. The horizon of the aggregates from that cause is birth.

The maturation of the aggregates, in other words, this from the second instant onward until death is aging. The disintegration of the aggregates after aging is death. It’s a beautiful presentation, isn’t it? Beautiful. You have the key words here if you want to meditate on links six to 12, this is what you should meditate upon: conflation, experience, predilection, increase, karma generating birth, horizon, maturation, disintegration.

How are the 12 limbs classified? Now that we have presented them one by one, we can try to understand how the process functions. This is a Tibetan painting of the first limb of ignorance, a blind man with a staff. You have four subdivisions. Broadly speaking, the 12 links can initially be subdivided into two: causes and effects.

There are two sets of causes and two sets of effects. The first set of causes are the three limbs in red: ignorance, compositional factors, and consciousness at the time of the cause. Then you have four projected limbs, and I’ve added you should really put this in bracket, consciousness at the time of the result, to make it clear to you. Some people accept that it is present in the limb at the time of the effect, some do not. But normally, the four projected limbs are name and form, in other words conception, the six loci, the creation of the sense organs, contact, their conflation with their object, and sensation, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral sensation.

This is one effect. Then you have three actualizing limbs, which are causes of gain. These include two limbs which are of the nature of the afflictions: craving and appropriation, which are both desire. Craving is desire, appropriation is great desire. And the limb of existence which is karma.

It’s a karma which immediately causes the two last limbs of effect birth, and aging and death. So if you keep in mind that you have a three four three two structure that will help a lot, You have three projecting limbs one two three, four projected limbs one two three four, three actualizing limbs one two three, two actualized limbs one two. If you can keep that little nemotechnic number in mind, it will help you to remember the sequence. And now we shall see in greater detail how this would work. The three causal limbs, the projecting limbs, give rise to the four projected limbs.

The three actualizing limbs give rise to the two actualized limbs. The sequence from one to 12 is one sequence of the 12 links, one cycle of the 12 links. It is one cycle starting with ignorance and a karma, which leads to a birth and to death. Now the big question is how does this unfold over lives? And I was able to find you, it was difficult, but I found a representation of the 12 images symbolizing the 12 links.

Then this is really something to meditate upon. You have the blind person, the potter, the monkey, I should give you the names actually the blind person ignorance, the potter compositional factors, the monkey consciousness, the coracle or the boat name and form, then the six loci an empty castle. This I can’t even distinguish what it is sensation is that a kiss? Okay, I’ll take your word for it. The sixth limb sensation, a kiss, the seventh limb, excuse me, sixth limb contact, a kiss, the seventh limb sensation, an arrow in the eye, the eighth limb craving, drinking friends, the ninth limb appropriation, picking fruit, the tenth limb existence, a pregnant woman, the eleventh limb birth, and the twelfth limb aging, in other words an old man, and death a body on his back.

These are the symbols of the 12 limbs. So how many lives does it take to complete one cycle of 12 limbs? It can only happen in two lives or three lives. It can never happen in one life, and it can never happen in more than three lives. In other words, it never happened in four, five, six, seven, eight, nine lives.

It happens only over two or three lives, but these lives are not necessarily subsequent. They can be, but they do not have to be. So if we look at this in a diagram, over two lives this is how it would unfold. The first life is life n, let’s say life 1,000, and the second life is life n plus k, let’s say life 20,000, or it could be life 1,000 and life 1,001. Both are possible.

During the first life, life n, you have the six causal limbs. Remember we spoke of the division of the 12 limbs into causal and resulting limbs. The six causal limbs, limbs one, two, three, and limbs eight, nine, 10, would be present during the first life. The six resulting limbs, limbs four, five, six, seven, and eleven and twelve, would be present during the subsequent life, as you can see here. You have in other words three projecting limbs during the first life, as well as three actualizing limbs, and four projected limbs during the second life, and two actualized limbs.

In one life, in other words, ignorance is generated from that karma, consciousness in which ignorant in which karma is placed, then the desire which leads to the increase of that karma, appropriation which leads to an even greater increase of that karma, which gives rise at the time of death of this person to the karma of existence, what we call the tenth limb existence, which causes rebirth in a subsequent life, which may be very far in the future, and at that time those who accept consciousness at the time of the results say that it is present. I personally don’t, to be honest with you, because I think it is perfectly covered by name and form, there’s no need. So we have the limb of name and form, which is the conception of the new life up to tentatively the eighth week, the six loci stretching until the sense organs are complete, contact when the sense organs of the fetus, its object, and the sense consciousness are connected, sensation the fetus experiences around week twenty seven, 20 seven to thirty, pleasant and unpleasant sensations, and eventually birth, aging and death. What is striking you will see in this presentation of the 12 limbs is that birth, aging and death are quite unimportant.

They are given two limbs, everything else covers 10 limbs. Yet birth aging and death are what is most important for us, aren’t they? Now over three lives, the 12 limbs of one cycle would mature as follows. Let’s say you have life n 1,000, life n plus k life ten fifty, and life n plus k plus p life 6,000. During the first life you have the three causal limbs, and during a future life you have another three causal limbs, and then all the effect limbs must be present together within one life.

So you have first your three projecting limbs, which basically define a life, project a rebirth. Then you have your three causal limbs, which basically lead this karma to increase in power until it is ready to actually trigger an existence. And then you have the six effect limbs from conception to death in one life. So what you want to keep in mind is that the 12 limbs can unfold over two lives or over three lives. These lives can be separated by an infinite amount of time.

If they unfold over two lives, all the causal limbs must occur in life one, and all the effect limbs must occur in life two. If they unfold over three lives, the projecting limbs, the three first limbs occur over life one, the actualizing limbs occur over life two, and all of the result limbs, projected and actualized limbs, occur over life three. And these three lives can be separated by as much time as you want. Now you might think this is basically an intellectual construct, and that’s why I will be showing you in a couple of minutes a case where it’s quite convincing really, one gets a clear sense that this might be what is happening. But before that, I’d like to cover another subdivision of the 12 limbs with you, which is that you have basically a set of limbs of the afflictions, of limbs of karma, and of limbs of suffering.

The three limbs of the afflictions are ignorance, craving, and appropriation. Craving and appropriation obviously are both desires. The limbs of karma, as we mentioned, are compositional factors, second limb, and existence, the tenth limb. And all the remaining limbs are suffering from consciousness all the way to aging and death. It is very powerful to meditate on the 12 limbs in this way.

And it is to this subdivision that Nāgārjuna refers in this stanza, and you can see why you needed a teacher in the old days. From the three arises two, from the two arises seven, and again from the seven arises three, the wheel of existence itself repeatedly turns. From the three arises two, from the two arises seven, and again from the seven arises three. The wheel of existence turns. This is a process.

From the afflictions arise karma, from the karma arises suffering, from suffering arise the afflictions again. And at TBI we haven’t presented this in detail, because it is a little bit more advanced, but you can see how beneficial it is to think about things in these terms. Now the 12 limbs limbs explain both the process of generation of saṃsāra and the process of exit from saṃsāra. In the forward or direct order, they explained the process of entering into cyclic existence, in the inverse order they explained the process of leaving cyclic existence. If the 12 links are presented from the standpoint of the thoroughly afflicted, they are saṃsāra.

If they are presented from the standpoint of the totally purified, they are the third noble truth to path of cessation. What does this mean? We have once again a collection of 12 limbs spread over two or three lives. This is a process of generation. Ignorance, compositional factors, and consciousness, let us say over two lives.

Ignorance, compositional factors, and consciousness, as well as craving, appropriation and existence, give rise to name and form, the six loci, contact and sensation, as well as birth, aging and death. You have a constant process of generation from ignorance and karma, of saṃsāra. Lives, which are spread, if this were for instance a sequence of lives of a sentient being, you would have, let’s say for two lives, six limbs here, and let’s say six limbs here, separated by, let’s say 15 lives. Then the remaining lives are connected by other sets of the 12 links, like the warp and the woof of a fabric, sets of 12 links coming from we do not know where. So how do we put an end to this?

This is the inverse cycle of the 12 lives. If we put an end to ignorance, we put an end to the compositional factors. Putting an end to compositional factors, we put it into consciousness, and if we cover this, let’s say, over two lives, this in turn would put an end to the remaining three limbs, and that in turn would put an end to the remaining six limbs. So you can see that through putting an end to ignorance at the beginning, you put an end to everything else without exception. Now let us take an example which I think will make this very difficult concept much easier.

It’s a case I have already presented a TBI, I didn’t think it was possible to analyze it in these times, it’s very rare to get data which allows us, but in this case it is. It’s a case of a young Sri Lankan boy called Vijayaratne, who is still alive actually, the case was studied by Ian Stevenson, and Vijayaratne remembered being a murderer in a previous life. He also had tentative memories of a rebirth in the hell realms and of rebirth as an animal, and then we are going to see this is a verified case it’s not just a case of hypnotic recollection which is completely unverified and have to take the author’s word for it. Vijayaratne’s memories of being Ratran Hami were verified by Stevenson, so Vigeratne knew things he could not know and was not supposed to know. So I’ll cover the case briefly with you.

Vijayaratne was born in 1947 in Sri Lanka. He was born with a deformity of the right breast and arm, and a strong facial resemblance to his father’s dead brother, who it turns out was the murderer, Ratran Hami. He started talking as in almost all these cases of his past life at age two and a half. It’s when the child starts talking that he starts talking of past lives, and this extends until the age of six, at which point normally the child stops talking about them. And he himself said he had been born with a withered arm because he had murdered his wife in a previous life, Podi Menika, with that arm.

Now he remembered being his father’s dead brother, Ratran Hami, who died in 1928. This is a child’s assertions at age two and a half. Now if we go back in time to the life of Ratran Hami between 1904 and 1928, Ratran Hami obviously was someone who was quite unfortunate in his emotional or sentimental life. He was supposed to get married to a Sri Lankan lady called Podi Menika, and she, it seems, rejected him at the last minute. It would seem because meat would be served at the wedding meal.

It seems that was the main reason, but others say that she had amorous feelings for someone else. In any case, walked back, Ratran Hami walked back to his village and sharpened a kris, which as you know is a particularly cruel dagger, a waving dagger, you know. Then carefully he paid off all his debts, he returned to Podi Menika’s village on foot, and he repeatedly stabbed her at least three times according to the accounts. Now I would like to point out here the degree of premeditation involved, since he had to walk back to his village, sharpen carefully the knife, meet everyone to pay his debts, and walk again to the village of his promise, before her stabbing her in such a way that it is quite obvious she was trying to flee during the murder, because he stabbed her in the back and shoulder. Specifically, he stabbed her in the left axilla, which is the left armpit which would indicate she was raising her arm to protect herself, and he also stabbed her in the back.

This is a particular cruelty and savagery in this murder. Upon arrest he denied the charges, and what is quite striking is that until his death, Ratran Hami was very self righteous about the events, he had basically done the right thing. Then at his execution, he told his brother, Vijayaratne’s father, that he would return as his son. Now the young remembers clearly as a child being executed by hanging in 1928. He remembers the details of the execution, which a child would not know obviously, especially a child in the countryside in Sri Lanka, and he remembers his last thought when the trap was sprung, which was his brother.

Then he remembers his neck tightening and falling into a pit of fire. The only memory he has after that is this pit of fire. Now if we look at Vijayaratne, in other words the child remembering this, and his reaction to the memory of murdering his wife in a previous life, age 14, he expressed no regrets whatsoever, and said he would murder her again if the same events had happened, she had dishonored him. It’s much later that he changes his outlook around the age 22, and relinquishes violence. Vijayaratne has, and it is rare among Stevenson’s cases, clear memories of non human rebirths.

Now we now know that Stevenson himself censored much of the material in his research referring to non human memories. He felt that memories of human rebirths were problematical enough for the medical community without starting to talk about memories of rebirth as an animal. I have traced in his work a couple cases where somehow they pop through, in Vijayaratne’s case is a memory of a rebirth it seems in the hell realms, and a rebirth as a bird. Some other works, another Sri Lankan case, there’s a memory, it’s very interesting memory, where the young child remembers being big, hairy, black, and being unable to walk to see sideways, and constantly being tormented by flies, and it turns out in Sri Lanka around this period the main means of transport was horse drawn buggies. Now this is precisely the sort of animal memory which is quite convincing, because you would not necessarily expect an animal to have self consciousness.

Consciousness, yes, but self consciousness perhaps not. Returning to Vijayaratne, Vijayaratne remembers clearly dropping into a pit of fire, and he remembers very clearly flying through the airs and being perched on three tops. Now what is quite striking is that later on in life, Vijayaratne had two psychotic episodes, and during both psychotic episodes he was interned, he was diagnosed as schizophrenic, he would gather twigs and pile them in a heap, and then jump up and down on twigs for batting his wings, his hands, you know. It’s quite an interesting type of behavior, and obviously it was considered as schizophrenia, you know, but there are other possible explanations. So what is sequence with the recollected lives of Vijayaratne?

We have four lives for which we have evidence. His present life was Vijayaratne, we go from the present life backwards. Born in 1947, in the present life rejected by women, psychotic episodes, right arm and digits atrophied, and chest muscle and rib atrophied. The first life we recollected is that of Ratran Hami, rejected by his second wife, but you can see already at the age of 24 he had been married, or he was to be married a second time. So he clearly was not very fortunate in his choice of wives or in his behavior.

He was rejected by his second wife, murdered her, and was executed in the gallows in 1928. Then we have a hell rebirth, there’s only one memory, the memory of fire, duration unknown. In an animal rebirth, only one memory of flying from tree to tree. The gap between life one and life four is eighteen and a half years. So we have an eighteen and a half year period of rebirth in the lower realms.

We don’t know how much time was spent in a hell rebirth, and how much time was spent in an animal rebirth. We only have the two human lives, but there are clear correspondences between the human lives. Now if we try to analyze this recollection of four lives in terms of the 12 links, and this is my own work, it’s hypothetical, but it fits with core Buddhist teachings and with the events as recounted by Vijayaratne. We have one cycle of 12 limbs over two consecutive lives, These are lives one and two. As we said during the first life of Ratran Hami, you have six causal links, and during the second life I think it’s an Avici Hell rebirth, because the only memory is fire, you have six result links.

You will note there is no intermediate state in Ratran Hami’s memories, so the trapdoor of the gallows opens, he feels a noose tightening, and the next memory is fire. Now this is clear in the case of rebirth in Avicii. In the case of rebirth in Avicii, hell there’s no intermediate life, you know, and we will talk about later why he would have had such a difficult rebirth. The first six links in Ratran Hami’s life were ignorance, which led to the accumulation of the karma of killing. Implanted into consciousness at the time of the killing, the limb of craving is a desire for his fiancee to suffer, in the particularly for savage mode of killing, stabbing three times someone who’s trying to defend herself with a particularly gruesome weapon and stabbing her in the back as well.

The appropriation’s limb is the evil view, you remember we mentioned that there were four types of appropriation, that such murder is praiseworthy. This leads to a sense of rejoicing in the murder, and this naturally leads to a great increase in the power of the karma of killing. In turn the limb of appropriation leads to the limb of existence, this karma of killing which has increased becomes powerful enough to project a rebirth. It is enhanced by craving and appropriation and the rebirth is projects is a Avici Hell rebirth. Why a Avici Hell rebirth?

Because the deed was extremely weighty. It is a murder of a human being, it’s a murder of a human being was very close to him. It’s the murder of a human being was very close to him and who tried to defend herself, and who was defenseless, and it is profoundly premeditated. Vijayaratne did not murder in a fit of passion, it was calculated. He went back to the village, he sharpened the knife slowly, he paid his debts, he walked back to the gardener’s village, and then over and again he stabbed her.

Then on top of this, it is a murder which is associated with a profound sense of self righteousness. This was the right thing to do, Vijayaratne rejoiced in it, he in this life considered that given the chance he would do it again, the karma becomes extraordinarily powerful. In the case of the Avici Hell rebirth, the only experience as you can see is fire. All six result limbs, the rebirth would be miraculous as we said, and all six limbs just are subsumed by the experience of, in my opinion, an inner fire, you know, obviously not exterior flames. This is one cycle of 12 limbs over two consecutive lives.

Then you have a second cycle of 12 limbs. If we go back to our presentation here, you can see the first cycle of 12 limbs covers these two lives. But then, what exactly caused life for? Not the details of life for. In the case of the 12 realms we’re speaking of projecting karma, not of completing karma.

So what in Ratran Hami’s life could cause a human rebirth? We had one cycle of 12 lives which culminated in the projecting karma for a hell rebirth, a non virtuous deed, a heinous deed really, and a second deed in Ratran Hami’s life which must have been virtuous since he was reborn as a human being, the projecting karma led to rebirth in the higher realms. Then in my opinion it is the thought of his brother. We have one first cycle of 12 limbs in Ratran Hami’s life, ignorance. Composition factor is the oath, the promise to his brother to return as his son.

His brother is profoundly distressed, Ratran Hami tries to console him, he says he will return. This is imparted into consciousness at the time of the cause. Now the craving, it is a craving, it’s a desire to comfort his brother, but it is virtuous. And at the time of death, the appropriation is probably a profound view to see desire to seek his brother again, and perhaps a strong sense of the self. This led to the increasing power of this oath, and from a Buddhist standpoint, oaths in general are powerful things.

Oaths at the time of death are particularly powerful because of the type of consciousness involved. This led to the limb of existence, a powerful karma to be reborn as a human being, as which human being? His brother’s son. Then he was reborn as a human being, and the limb of name and form basically covers Vijayaratne’s consciousness from conception up to tentatively four or five weeks. The sixth loci is the fetus around sixteen weeks, where the sense organs are nascent, contact occurs when the sense objects are complete and are linked with their object around twenty weeks, then you have sensation, his birth in January, and his life, aging, and death.

This is the second sequence of 12 links. So you can see if we go back, that you have, based on the evidence, two probable sets of 12 links unfolding over two lives. One leading from life one to life two, which is basically caused by the second link of compositional factors, the karma of murder, and one going from life one to life four, caused by the second link of the oath given to the brother, out of compassion basically, during the first life which led to a human rebirth. Now in this human rebirth, clearly the projecting karma is good, Vijayaratne is human. The completing karma is bad, and I would like since we have some time to analyze at present the three types of karma at work in Vijaratne’s life.

These are the ancient Greek fates. So all cultures and civilizations speak of destiny, but it is really in this analysis of karma and causality that what we experience ourselves as our own destiny can best be understood. What led to Vijayaratne’s human life from the life of Rattra and Hami? So what led from this life to this life, and what in this life led to the features of this life? The projecting karma we already talked about.

Vijayaratne or Ratran Hami got a human rebirth because of his promise to his brother on the gallows. The completing karma is negative, and Vijayaratne has both physical deformities and mental instability. The physical deformities are very striking. The right arm is deformed, Vijayaratne attributed that to stabbing, Podi Menika. And the digits of the right arm are atrophied.

Let alone this, the pectoral muscle in the right part of the chest is atrophied. Now what is striking here is that the pectoral muscle in the right part of the chest is atrophied. Pt. Hami struck Podi Menika’s left side with his right hand and therefore if you look at the unfolding of the completing karma it is not the part of the body of Podi Menika which was wounded which is affected in Vijayaratne’s body, it’s a part of Vigeratne’s body which did the deed, which is affected. And Vigeratne himself recognized this, as a child he said his arm was atrophied and his right pectoral muscle was atrophied because he had murdered his fiancee in a previous life.

So this is how one could understand the unfolding of the 12 links. Then what I would suggest to you as a personal exercise, if you want to integrate the Buddhist teachings, is to study in-depth Stevenson’s works, Stevenson’s research. We have the books in the library, you can order them on Abbey books. Take some of the cases where there are clear recollections of several several lives, convince yourself of the authenticity of these recollections, and then see whether the account which is given fits the Buddhist account of karma and causality, and see if you can construct cycles of the 12 links between lives. This is very powerful for one’s own mind.

The representation of the 12 links within what’s known as the wheel of life is the most ancient Buddhist representation. This is a picture I took in Ajanta in India. This fresco goes back to the fifth century, and it is actually the Buddha himself who enjoined his disciples to paint the 12 links. At the period of the Buddha it was said that the Buddha’s two foremost disciples, Śāriputra and Maudgalyayāna, could travel through their powers of concentration in the various realms, and describe the karmic results of these to the Buddha’s disciples. Then the Buddha said that after their passing there probably would not be practitioners such capacities, and therefore a chart should be drawn of saṃsāra and how saṃsāra functions, which is what the 12 links are all about.

This chart is known as the wheel of life. This is one representation. You have the six realms. This is the divine realm, this probably is the human realm, this is the realm of Preta’s, the hell realms, the animal realms, and the realm of the demigods. Around these six realms, or perhaps starting with with the center, inside the six realms you have the three motors of cyclic existence.

Desire symbolized by a cock, hatred symbolized by a snake, and ignorance symbolized by a pig, which leads to rebirth from the lower realms into the higher realms and back down. Around on the periphery of the circumference you have the 12 limbs, which lead to cycles of two or three lives. The blind person of ignorance, the potter of compositional factors, the monkey of consciousness, the coracle of name and form, the empty house of the six loci, then the kiss of contact, the arrow of sensation, the festivities of beer drinking, of craving, picking the fruits of appropriation, pregnancy, in other words the tenth limb of existence, the eleventh limb of birth, symbolized by birth, and the 12 limbs of aging and death, symbolized by a body. The six realms and the 12 links are all held in the mouth of the Lord of Death. In other words, are all impermanent.

And you can see here how one falls from the higher realms to the lower realms, only to be reborn back in the higher realms as a god, to fall back in the lower realms, and to be reborn upwards. First as a lay person, then one has a good karma to become a monk, then one has a good karma to maybe become a Geshe, Then one has a good karma to become a god. And then, once bad karma ripens, one falls to the hell realms again. His Holiness the Dalai Lama said at Sera Je, Some have the good karma to become monks from virtuous deeds in past lives, and then in this life create the karma to be reborn in the lower realms. This is cyclic existence.

And then the understanding of the 12 links is summarized by Nāgārjuna in this magnificent stanza of the Bodhicittavivarāna. I accept the deeds which have arisen in dependence on the 12 limbs beginning from ignorance up to aging as akin to a dream or an illusion. I do not accept some sentient being other than the wheel of the 12 limbs revolving on the path of existence as enjoyer of causality. This is the most one of the most profound verses in all of Nāgārjuna’s words. These three lines here make a magnificent topic of meditation.

There is no sentient being apart from this mesh of the 12 limbs. And this is what I had to say to you today. My apologies for going as usual over time, and if you have questions and you’re not too exhausted, I’ll be happy to try to answer. Them. Yes please.

Yes, everyone does. Remember what I said at the beginning you have a general and a particular presentation. The general presentation indeed is what you said. The first limb gives rise to the second, third, the fourth, to the fifth, to the sixth, to the seventh, but then when you present them in particular for one given individual, then it’s obvious if you look at them that it’s not possible to do it like that, right? Because you would have the fourth limb which is conception, name and form, and then somehow you have all of these things happening in the womb and then you have the eleventh limb of birth.

So you have to posit them a bit differently. Then how you posit them is a topic of debate, but basically the consensus is it’s there’s unanimity on this one they can only be posited over two or three lives. In the case of Ratran Hami I think makes it quite over Vijayaratne makes it quite clear. Did you think did you think that helped? You could see how there is a comma in the case let’s say the karma of murder accumulated one year before his execution, then that karma is implanted in consciousness, then probably in my opinion the limbs of craving and appropriation occurred over one full year as he kept thinking about it and basically rejoicing in the deed you know he had taken revenge as his Afghani cab driver was telling me So by the time of his death, that karma of existence, the tenth limb, was ready to give a result, which it did instantaneously with rebirth in Avicii without an intermediate state.

But it’s something one has to analyze with individual cases. Do you have other questions? Please. Yes. You have basically three limbs of the afflictions, two limbs of karma, and seven limbs of suffering.

Now, you have the general sequence of the afflictions giving rise to karma, and karma giving rise to suffering. Right, this is a general sequence of causality. Now within the limbs of the afflictions you have the root affliction ignorance, which gives rise to both craving and appropriation, with appropriation being an enhanced form of craving. These give rise in the case of ignorance to compositional factors, and in the case of the eighth and ninth limb of craving and appropriation to existence, what craving and appropriation do is they cause a maturation of the second limb. The second limb compositional factor is a karma of murder in the case of Ratran Hami, is in the mind, but the eighth and the ninth limb cause it to become powerful enough to cause a rebirth.

Then this rebirth is the fourth limb of name and form. The actual rebirth is that, not birth, right? It’s conception. Then the process of this rebirth goes through fetal development all the way to birth, and then aging and death. At this point, this sequence of the 12 limbs is over.

Now there are other sequences of the 12 limbs interwoven with it, other karmic deeds giving rise to other rebirths, and what you have is like a mesh or I had during the preliminary presentation a coat of mail I thought is a very good metaphor. You know what a coat of mail is from the Middle Ages. Then you have the mesh like this but inside you have nothing, right? This is what there is. The person is this mesh cycle of the 12 limbs upon cycle of the 12 limbs interwoven with each other, all motivated, all impelled by deeds from a very distant past.

Does that make sense? Do you have other questions? Please. The what? Who said that?

You have no completing karma within the 12 links, since the 12 links define a rebirth, and if you look at the definitions it’s obvious. Then completing karma is caused by deeds which are too weak to project a rebirth, and I think what is really important for us to understand within the 12 links maybe here will be clear. Let’s find a nice chart so I can make it really clear. And this will do. That comma is not the problem.

It’s the afflictions which enable the karma to mature which are the problem. So it is said the Arhats have gigantic amounts of non virtuous karma, but they have no afflictions. They have eliminated the afflictions. Therefore craving and appropriation cannot cause compositional factors, the karma they have, from becoming powerful enough to cause a negative rebirth. If we ourselves control our minds, whatever non virtuous karma we have cannot cause a non virtuous rebirth.

Control our minds specifically at the time of death. It’s at the time of death that the limb of appropriation is at its most powerful. Then, if we maintain a calm peaceful mind at the time of death, or at least avoid generating powerful desire, a powerful sense of sense of self and so forth, then there will never be a limb of existence, and as a result of this we will not experience a lower rebirth. If in addition to this we are able to generate a contaminated virtuous appropriation. For instance, a strong sense of affection for the spiritual teacher, which in our case is contaminated, we may see the teacher as a father figure, whatever.

This will lead to the maturation of a virtuous compositional factor and a good rebirth. So in our case, to eliminate the afflictions is difficult, but it is absolutely critical to prevent them from manifesting at the time of death. And if we encounter we have to help people who are in the dying process it is extremely important whatever else that at least their minds be at peace. It’s irrelevant how their minds are kept at peace. That’s why it’s very important not to proselytize people who are dying.

Proselytism tends to create reactions of animosity and rejection. It’s very important not to proselytize, not to preach to people who are dying. Instead, if someone who is dying, let’s say, is Jewish and they have a sound relation with their own face, then a menorah, a copy of the Talmud, of the Torah should be in the room. If they are Muslim, a copy of the Quran. If they are atheistic, then whatever brings them peace and happiness.

If they are Buddhist and sincere practitioners, a picture of their teacher, but the most important thing is that the mind of the person be at peace as much as possible and even better happy. Then this will cause virtuous karma to mature. Whether people believe in karma or not is completely irrelevant to the efficacy of the process. There’s actually a lot of data now from Stevenson and his team which basically supports the existence of past and future lives and indicates that there are karmic relations between the lives. Then to help people, one helps people within what they are comfortable with.

Do you have any other questions? Then, it’s been very long today, my apologies, it’s a difficult topic. It’s a topic which is profoundly beneficial, but you have to go over it again and again. If one goes over it carefully, it’s much more beneficial than meditating on emptiness or what one thinks one understands of emptiness, because this links one or enables one to take karmic control of one’s future lives. What we have never had so far.

If we have had good rebirths it’s been a bit haphazard. When one meditates carefully on the 12 limbs, if one cannot at least the four general features of karma and causality, one becomes very careful in one’s behavior. In what one does, what one says, and what one thinks. And then if one makes mistakes, and we all do, one tries to be sure that there is no amplification, that craving is reduced to the minimum, and that appropriation if possible is not there, so that we are not cast someplace we don’t want to be. Thank you very much.

Yes, if you’re gonna if you’re gonna go through it, why not? Yes. Would you like to go through it? In print you mean no. There’s a bibliography for those of you who are interested, not quite sure.

The teaching start next week with Geshe Jampa Gyatsen and have a look at we’ve got some flyers on Losar beginning of the Tibetan New Year on the March 2. We’ll have a Puja here, which is a Sunday morning at 09:00.

Key terms in this teaching

atman dag (Tib)

Self; as opposed to anatman (no-self), the Buddha’s explanation of selflessness in the Four Noble Truths Sutra. LYWA

Avici narme (Tib)

The lowest level of hell. LYWA

completing karma drubje kyi lä (Tib)

Also called finishing karma, the karmic imprints that ripen to determine the type of experiences we have when we are reborn, as opposed to throwing karma that determines the actual rebirth. LYWA

dhyana samten (Tib)

An advanced form of concentration meditation after realizing shamatha (calm abiding). LYWA

higher realms

The higher realms comprise the more fortunate rebirths as a human, god or demi-god. LYWA

mind basis of all alayavijana (Skt); kun zhi nam shä (Tib)

A main consciousness posited by the Cittamatra school, the consciousness they say is needed to carry karmic imprints. LYWA

principal consciousness vijnana (Skt); nam shë (Tib)

The main cognition posited by means of apprehending the entity of its object. Synonymous with main mind, it is one of the two divisions of mind, the other being mental factors. LYWA

six realms

The general way that Buddhism divides the whole of cyclic existence; there are three lower realms (hell, hungry ghost and animal) and three upper realms (human, demigod and god). LYWA

Definitions adapted from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive glossary, as taught in the Gelug tradition.